VIDEO: Footage from Al-Shayrat Airbase, Syria and the aftermath

by Sophie Mangal, Syria Media Center

edited April 8 to add working video link

On April 7, between 3.42am and 3.56am, a massive rocket attack was carried out from an area near Crete Island in the Mediterranean Sea. Two destroyers of the US Navy (USS Ross and USS Porter) launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian Al-Shayrat airbase in Homs Province.

According to various mass media, only 23 of them reached the Syrian airbase.

The strike on the Al-Shayrat airbase in Syria’s Homs Province destroyed a material storage depot, a training facility, a canteen, six Mig-23 aircraft in repair hangars and a radar station.

The runway, taxiways and the Syrian aircraft remain undamaged.

According to the command of the Syrian airbase, two Syrian military personnel were missing, four were killed and six were burned in the firefighting.

The remaining 36 cruise missiles hit the surrounding peaceful settlements.
As a result five civilians including three children were killed in the village of Al-Shayrat located 1.5 km east of the airbase.

Seven citizens were wounded in Al-Manzul (1 km north of the airfield).

Four people including one child were killed in Al-Hamrat (4.5 km south-east of the airfield).

Thus the combat effectiveness of the American massive missile strike against the Syrian airbase proved to be extremely low.

All the accusations of the alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention that were put forward by the U.S. as a justification for the strike are groundless. The statements of the U.S. side about the alleged evidence of the Syrian army using chemical weapons must be confirmed by real facts and presented to the world community. The U.S. has to prove the existence of unquestionable evidence that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian army in Khan Shaykhun.

It is well-known that between 2013 and 2016 the Syrian government fully implemented all measures to eliminate the existing chemical weapons as well as their delivery means and their production basis. All the stocks were destroyed.

The components for the production of chemical weapons were removed from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic and then destroyed at enterprises in the U.S., Finland, Great Britain and Germany.

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26 Comments

I doubt that civilians areas would have been hit in this attack because the target is a military base. Tomohawks are not fire and hope weapons. They are accurate enough to hit a specific corner of a building.

So this sounds like Surian propaganda. Obviously they’ll want to claim this attack was a failure but that also sends a bad signal. If America feels Assad isn’t getting the message that’s inviting further responses.

There are reliable reports that nearly half of the 60 missiles fired landed in civilian areas, killing and injuring several people, including children. If their accuracy is as you describe, this can only mean that those areas were deliberately targeted. We can then only feel disgust at Trump’s hypocritical, hand-wringing remarks about “poor little babies”.

Or the ‘Block IV’ Tomahawk is a worthless piece of junk, which was downed by superior ECMs (Electronic Counter Measures.)
In a perverse way, the Americans may have got what they long wanted – an NFZ. That is, at least for their Tomahawks. There are 36 carcasses of Tomahawks currently on their way to Russian/Syrian/Iranian and Chinese labs – to be reverse engineered to find their vulnerabilities. These can be relayed to the S-400, and other air defense systems. Raytheon will then get the $?bn no-bid contract to upgrade to the Block V Tomahawk. On top of the $2bn already requested by the DoD to supply 4,000 units. Isn’t that how you justify an extra $54bn in ‘defence’ spending, when you are already spending around $1.5bn a day on ‘defence’?
[P.S. – whatever you do, don’t look at the rest of the economy, it’s about to tank!]http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/07/investing/syria-raytheon-tomahawk-missiles/index.html

Yes. The low level efficiency of the saturation strike suggests only a few possibilities:

A) Russian ECMs

B) Deliberate mistargeting (either by an insubordinate rank and file or ordered from on high for any number of ‘political’ reasons (as for example: ‘the crying need for more money to fix what was a demonstrable failure’ or ‘to telegraph to the warmongers in Washington how unprepared the U.S. military is to confront Russia’)

C) The guidance system of the existing stock of Tomahawks is unreliable junk (in which case, the ‘political’ implications underscored in ‘B)’ would hold as a matter of course and necessity)

” Isn’t that how you justify an extra $54bn in ‘defence’ spending, when you are already spending around $1.5bn a day on ‘defence’?”

My dream is that one day all of you “divided and conquered” “buffoons”, will let it sink in to your stubborn heads that all of this type of warfare became a reality very soon after the creation of the US Federal Reserve which is classed as a privately owned bank and not actually a federal bank in the way that its title suggests.

The so called “cold war” was a hoax which was designed to makes lots of money for the military industrial complex. And boy oh boy did it make loads of money out of the hoax! And much of it was made making a certain type of weapons that are a scientifically impossibility…But none the less, those extortionately priced fake weapons sit idly by in our leader’s knowledge that they are useless as destructive weapons, but are in fact extremely good at “scaring the shit out of” the very gullible main stream media worshipping people.

Henry Ford was well aware of where the money came from to finance the theft of Russia from its indigenous people during 1917 (the best of which were tortured and murdered in massive quantities). And Henry also did his best to bring a halt to WW1 but he failed, without want of trying.

If you cannot guess where the money (which was and still is, made out of “thin air”) came from to finance the Communist Bolshevik revolution, WW1 and WW2, ( and most wars since) then you needn’t investigate any further than the race of people who both created and benefited from the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

P.S.
The 2008 financial collapse was created by the very same race of people that created and still operates Wall Street.

The so called “cold war” was a hoax which was designed to makes lots of money for the military industrial complex. And boy oh boy did it make loads of money out of the hoax! And much of it was made making a certain type of weapons that are a scientifically impossibility…

Tell that to the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, [edited for ad hominem – Admin]

It’s impermissible to insult somebody who claims that Japanese people are too stupid to realize that the weapons which incinerated two of their cities, along with their inhabitants, were nothing out of the ordinary?

Well done for spotting that I was taking about so called: “nuclear weapons”, but your comment: “Tell that to the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki” suggests that you believe in that particular “industrial complex” hoax/ripoff.
If you are that confident in your belief that nuclear weapons really do exist and are able to prove that they do, then here is an opportunity for you to earn yourself one million Euros:
Pt 1 http://heiwaco.tripod.com/bomb.htm
Pt 2 http://heiwaco.tripod.com/bomb1.htm

I think the US will never provide definitive proof in cases like this even if, hypothetically speaking, they have it. Why? Because if they provide genuine proof even once they will be expected to provide it always. That is the last thing they want given that they have been caught lying and presenting bogus evidence before and it is highly unlikely they have genuine proof of all the acts they try to pin on their enemies du jour.

Besides, the western public is so passive it pretty much accepts any and all “explanations”, no proof required. The “fall” of Aleppo is a good example. There is not a shred of evidence supporting the panicked claims that the SAA and Hezbolllah carried out massacres of of civilians. Yet the public generally believes “Assad’s army” are bloodthirsty child killers and the “rebels” are principled “freedom fighters”.

I am not quite sure what exactly those calling for the Americans to provide evidence are expecting. They have never let lack of evidence stop them before because a) they likely don’t have any and b) the gas attack, like “Saddam ‘s WMD”, is only a pretext to provide cover for their goal….regime change.

The US government is not an honest broker made up of reasonable people who want to get along with other nations and live in a peaceful world. They are pathologically obsessed with world domination and are dishonest and bent to the core. They are the “indispensable” nation made up of “exceptional” people who have a god given right/duty to “guide” the world.

Expecting them to be reasonsable and act in good faith is a fool’s errand.

“I am not quite sure what exactly those calling for the Americans to provide evidence are expecting.”

I don’t think any reasonable person expects to ever convince the American establishment or any other criminal mafia-like organisation to mend its ways and begin to actually justify its violence with genuine instances of crimes that are both being committed by their intended victims and crying out for a kind of retributive justice.

Rather, the call for “evidence” is a gesture unmasking the false justifications used by the criminals in high place to persuade their subaltern populations that the slaughters in which they are being forced to participate, directly or indirectly, as soldiers or otherwise, are both necessary and just.

The point is to demonstrate to the military rank and file, to the war-crazed population, to would be soldiers, that under capitalism, war can only serve one and only one purpose, namely, to expropriate, enslave and pillage entire societies on behalf of ruling and imperialistic oligarchies.

If people appear to be passive or unduly acquiescent, it is because by and large they are simply ignorant of the manner in which they are being deceived and brainwashed.

By pointing to the actual absence of adequate grounds for going to war, there is the chance that one will provoke some people out of their passivity to reflect and thereby potentially subvert their consent to what is a criminal undertaking because in fact it really is morally unjustifiable.

The point, then, “of calling for evidence” is to spur that very resistance whose prominent and widespread absence you yourself recognize, bemoan and decry.

If not by having come across similar “calls for evidence” or the highlighting of the absence “of such evidence,” how did you ever come around to the view that the US government is comprised of people who “. . .are pathologically obsessed with world domination and are dishonest and bent to the core?”

And now that you know what the US government is about, would you willingly serve it?

That makes sense, and I agree. I was going with the assumption that the challenge against American justifications for war would never be seen or heard by the mass media consuming public but perhaps that was too self-limiting. I do not doubt that if the propagandized masses could be brought to consider points of view not covered by the media – and learn how to think logically about geopolitics – the reaction would be very different than what it is today. If they “woke up” and saw that the evidence was flimsy or non-existent that would have an impact, although the Americans and their sycophants could produce fake evidence like they did before the Iraq invasion.

The core problem faced by left-leaning resistance is how to influence people to break free of the media shackles and face truths that are very frightening to people who have believed and trusted the system and its leaders. Psychology being what it is, many people would rather believe in comforting delusions rather than face stark and scary truths and a very uncertain future.

The right has an easier job here because all they do is criticize the things they don’t like rather than advocating the wholesale destruction of the current capitalist order. The left, in contrast, demands something of people. And in a market society where “caring”, empathy with others and actions that don’t have an immediate self-gratifying payoff, are easily dismissed as a waste of time or looked upon as a sign of weakness. Overcoming this is a huge challenge. IMO the left needs to get back to class analysis and tie everything else into that. Easier said than done of course.

“The core problem faced by left-leaning resistance is how to influence people to break free of the media shackles and face truths that are very frightening to people who have believed and trusted the system and its leaders.”

Yes. That is a big part of the problem. In addition to this problem of the incessant saturation barrage of the corporate media, however, the task also involves transforming social relations that are inscribed into the very patterns of people’s daily lives, rooted in their habits and motivations and ways of feeling and thinking, patterns of existence that are cultural and therefore as second nature to the individual and the entire collective, and compounding even that, these enculturated (reflexive or quasi-instinctual) relations are overseen and managed and enforced by the state, by means of the courts and the police and, as a last resort, the military, to say nothing at all of the indoctrination implicit in the mandatory schooling of children and the formal education prescribed at all higher levels.

So the challenge of transforming our society into something more progressive than the reigning barbarity is daunting, and completing it yet remains far off in the distant future for all the obstacles standing in its way. Although the desperate outrages and the environmental spoliations that are upon us cry out for the most urgent and immediate overthrow of the system, this simply cannot and will not be done.

I understand why, when some begin to grasp what is truly involved in the process of transforming society, many conclude it to be a waste of their precious time because the change, if it is ever to be carried through, must become the concerted work of succeeding generations. If the goal cannot be reached in the span of their lifetime, if they themselves through their own efforts cannot bring it about, they feel or imagine that it simply cannot be realized at all. If results cannot be immediate, defeat is the foregone conclusion.

But they are wrong, of course, for as eminently social and implicated in institutions as we are, life for humans is and has always been not merely intra-generational, but fundamentally inter-generational.

We have children because they are our future, and we invest so much of ourselves in them because we would avail them of the wherewithal to live their lives at least as well as we do our own, when or should the day arrive that they will find themselves without our parental ministrations and guidance.

So the future of humanity — through our children, through the younger generations, who are as real as we are – is as much part of our reality as our own present moment of existence, and this whether we are aware of it or not.

Because our children are real, the future is as much so, and our children can be and are taught much of what it is we know.

Therefore, if we want a revolution for the betterment of mankind, for the improvement of our lives, of the lives of our children, not only must we examine and analyse our circumstances and ourselves so as to discern possible routes forward for ourselves, but when we hit upon ‘rational certainties,’ things that we know to be true and relevant to the work of the overthrow for which we pine, we are remiss not to impart these insights to our friends, but most of all, to those who will survive us and who in hopefully increasing numbers will and must carry the fight forward.

Revolution, progress, is a long and slow process. It’s always two steps forward, and one step back.

No one can make a revolution, but societies sometimes do become unstable politically and socially, and when this happens, revolts can and sometimes break out.

The outcomes are always uncertain. But what is certain, is that the ensuing reconstitution always stands a better chance of being progressive the greater the number of people involved in the revolt who actually had an understanding of the ‘troubles’ that gave rise to it and who could see opportunities to improve things for all.

The core problem is, then, that we can’t make a revolution though we may well push for one; and if in the aftermath of the next serious upheaval something like socialism is to prevail, the ideological hegemony of capital will already need to have been seriously eroded beforehand.

That kind of erosion usually caused in two ways: a) the system itself enters into crises or decline, and more and more people who suffer the brunt of its harsh insufficiencies simply start despising it; and b) ideological opponents who remorselessly unmask the irrationalities of the system’s reigning orthodoxies begin to garner the approving attention of great numbers of people.

In periods such as ours when revolution does not appear to be in the offing or seriously brewing, making yourself a ‘tribune’ of the people is as revolutionary as you can and should be.

Educate yourself, ready yourself. Educate others, ready others.

In this way, if and when the moment does arise, some people will understand what they are and should be fighting for. The odds in their favor will be directly proportional to their relative numbers and the quality of their collective intelligence.

If you want a revolution, you must know what to proselytize and must proselytize.

Yes, if the evidence can be used to justify their criminal designs, your can be sure that it will be amplified and played up in any way it can be. If not, it is forcibly suppressed or ignored, and when it can’t be ignored, it is denigrated as the ravings of deranged “conspiracy theorists.”

I am not so sure they would produce proof if they had it. Because they know they do not have evidence to back up the accusations they make against the bogeymen of the hour, actual evidence, if they had it, would up the standard of proof they would be expected to provide and that would work against them.

They concocted evidence before invading Iraq because they thought it helped make their case with the American public. Today, that episode has already been forgotten by most people. And with mass media produced pro-establishment propaganda saturating the mediascape truth is easily brushed aside.

Take the “fall” of Aleppo for example. Despite very credible evidence to the contrary being produced, the majority of westerners still believe the SAA and Hezbollah massacred civilians and that the “rebels” are fighting for liberal democracy. They believe that NATO bombing is “humanitarian” and that Russian and Syrian air force commanders are sadistic fiends who target civilians. No proof required.

Besides, the gas attack is a red herring. While some people spend time and energy demanding evidence that will never come the Americans prepare for all out war against Syria. And, hypothetically speaking, if they did produce evidence, would you then be satisfied and have no problem with a war against Syria?

The unprovoked attack contravenes international law and is therefore a war crime. Even if the alleged chemical attack had been carried out by Syrian government forces – for which there is no evidence and no plausible reason – the US attack would still be a war crime. The contempt shown by the US and its allies – especially the UK – for international law is sickening, as is the behaviour of the UN. One longs for these crimes to be punished.

@paulcarline: whilst morally and in essence you are absolutely correct, and these crimes should be punishable; the US (and Israel) have (consciously) opted out of many of the conventions of International Law; they do not recognise the major instrument for the prosecution of International Law – the ICC; and the American Service Members Protection Act 2002 pretty much grants sovereign immunity to their military and political actors.
They are an empire now; and they have granted themselves permission to act as they please; unfettered by any moral, ethical or international convention – because might is right and they are guided by a divine and exceptional ‘Manifest Destiny’.
If, on the other hand, a designated enemy should cross (many) red lines – they are to be punished by the full force of their (divinely guided) military; sanctioned by the UN; and prosecuted by International Law. Hypocrisy writ large.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act

My apologies about that. Our site doesn’t accept certain types of files, which is why the link. I’m in contact with the author of this article and hope to receive an accurate URL soon. Will update the link the moment I have the correct URL.

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